THE GRADUATE COLLEGE 



LD 



OF PRINCETON 



E WEST 



If 

111 



1 If 



n„ 



YA 



1 P 



'Ay 




Class _aLl 
Book_ ^ 



,¥n{ 



.10 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSfR 



^4^^ i 







iXj^t^r'-rs 










I, 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE 
OF PRINCETON 



WITH SOME REFLECTIONS ON 
THE HUMANIZING OF LEARNING 



BY 



ANDREW F. WEST 



II 



Dean of the Graduate School, Princeton University 



Reprinted With Additions and Re'vis ions from The Century Magazine 
Illustrations by John P. Cuyler 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 

PRINCETON 

1913 



.-^^ 



v^%'' 



Copyright, 191 3, by 
Princeton University Press 

Published on the day of the 

Dedication of the Graduate College 

October 22, 1913 




Oci,A3 58 4 71 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

WITH SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE HUMANIZING 
OF LEARNING 

"To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, every quality, 
and accident, of its little native Creek may have become 
familiar: but docs the Minnow understand the Ocean 
Tides?" Thomas Carlyle. 

The Graduate College of Princeton, so long deferred, so 
lately discussed in public and now at last put into operation, is 
in spirit and substance an institution for humanizing knowl- 
edge in the field of the higher liberal studies. 

The old story in Montaigne has point to-day. One fine 
morning, while riding pleasantly across the plain, he met a 
company of gentlemen and bowed, saying, "Messieurs, good 
morning," and the leader of the company curtly answered, 
"We are not Messieurs. My friend here is a grammarian, and 
I am a logician." It was no place for Montaigne — merely one 
of the Messieurs. So he rode away in search of more humane 
companionship. 

It is not a very long look from the sixteenth to the eight- 
eenth century and the pages of Oliver Goldsmith. The lam- 
bent wit of his essay on "The Present State of Polite 
Learning," fit sequel to the tale of Montaigne, plays like a 
flame, illuminating and scorching the particularist scholars of 
his time, "the men who contributed to obstruct the progress 
of wisdom by addicting their readers to one particular sect, 
or some favorite science. They generally carried on a petty 
traffic in some little creek ; within that they busily plied about, 
and drove an insignificant trade; but never ventured out into 
the great ocean of knowledge." 

3 



4 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OE PRINCETON 

Another forward look. We open at a venture the little 
book "Education et Instruction," written near the close of 
the nineteenth century by Brunetiere — incisive, crystal-clear 
as only good French can be, and lively in its attack on the nar- 
rowness of our "idees particulieres" when severed from the 
"idees generales." Not only the knowledge needed for a 
specialty, he contends, but the knowledge and moral qualities 
which underlie and connect all specialties are what make the 
scholar who is a man, and thereby the man who is to be the 
best scholar. "As for the particular ideas, our own — here is 
the most individual and in consequence the most eccentric 
thing in us. But the general ideas- — here is the truly human 
in us, and consequently that in us which is the most truly 
social." 

The long history of scholarship is punctuated with sharp 
comment like that cited above. It is not the comment of foes 
of knowledge, but of friends. And our present American 
scholarship could add many new instances as themes for the 
critic's pen — examples of men who are shut up in their "idees 
particulieres" and shut off from the general humanity of 
knowledge. I recall, among other cases, a Doctor of Phi- 
losophy in philology who had never heard of Tennyson's "In 
Memoriam," an archaeologist almost totally ignorant of the 
simplest facts of science, and a chemist who inquired sincerely 
for the meaning of "Empedocles," apparently not sure whether 
it was a plural or a mineral. The gossip of university circles 
would fill pages with such "modern instances," and they may 
be collected, like curios, at any large educational gathering. It 
is the break-up of knowledge into pieces, the resulting dis- 
severing of sympathy and de-humanizing of scholarship, the 
lowering of tone which comes from losing one's view of 
knowledge in its unified grandeur, and the literal "provincial- 
izing" of learning, that needs attention now — and not least in 
our graduate schools. At any rate, the belief that something 
serious is the matter is prevalent among those who may be 




->;M.»^.»X,.>V^ 



CLEVELAND TOWER AND ENTRANCE GATE 
FROM NORTHWEST 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 7 

presumed to know of what they speak. "It may be doubted," 
writes President Lowell in his first annual report, "whether 
the graduate schools in American universities are conducted 
upon the wisest principles." And to this utterance there are 
many echoes. 

What place and use has the graduate school in a university ? 
What is it for? The questions cannot be answered in a 
sentence or a page. The mediaeval world, unjustly over- 
praised and dispraised in turn, gave us, among other things, 
the universities, — a priceless inheritance. Paris, the mother- 
school, developed and delivered to the future a full model, 
imperfect in operation but sound in theory, both on the side 
of the professoriate and the students. It was a four-facultied 
university of professors combined with residential colleges of 
students. The French Revolution abolished old Paris and 
changed its old-time university. To-day the four-facultied 
university survives as a system in Germany and residential 
colleges of students remain chiefly in England. The truth at 
the heart of this history is that a university is a community, 
and a community made up of teachers and learners, an actual 
respuhlica litteraria (to quote an old name for the university 
at Cambridge), and that in this established and continuing 
society lies the safety of learning as a self -perpetuating force 
in its own sphere and the promise of learning as a usable force 
in the world. In this home dwells a comradeship of knowl- 
edge. Here, better than elsewhere, the young scholar may at- 
tain to enlarged vision and power. For his high vocation, as 
the philosopher Fichte said in a famous address to the stu- 
dents of Jena, is nothing less than acquirement of "the most 
widely extended survey of the actual advancement of the 
human rnce in general, and the steadfast promotion of that 
advancement." The true scholar is thus to be more than a 
learner, more than a teacher, more than a discoverer; he is to 
be a guide to his fellow-men. 

In the four-facultied university of Arts and Sciences, Law, 



8 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

Medicine and Divinity, the central and regulative body of 
studies consists of the so-called liberal arts and sciences or- 
ganized in the Faculty of that name. This body of studies 
alone is the nearest approximation we have to a system of 
pure knowledge of universal value. It represents to us, as 
no other studies can, the sum of things best worth knowing by 
men who seek knowledge for its own sake and in order to 
guide their lives in accordance with the highest ends. In 
America the preliminary stage of this knowledge is repre- 
sented, in intention at least, by the undergraduate college 
course — the historic and proper root of every true American 
university. The second or higher part of liberal knowledge, 
the flowering of the collegiate root, belongs to the graduate 
school. Here, if anywhere, the standards of pure knowledge 
are to be maintained for their own sake and for the sake of 
the great good they will do to all other kinds of knowledge, 
whether professional, technical, commercial, political or in- 
dustrial, and thus most usefully serve the need of the world. 
To determine, inspect, certify and maintain these standards — 
the weights and measure of knowledge — is the highest intel- 
lectual duty of a university, less only than the supreme duty 
of subordinating all to the moral end. If the general principles 
thus simply outlined are sound, it becomes a question of mo- 
ment to ascertain whether the condition of graduate studies 
and the life of graduate students is in accord with these 
convictions. 

Like civil liberty, the higher liberal knowledge is always in 
peril and always worth fighting for. Just now it is facing the 
perils of deterioration and dismemberment. Among the forces 
that threaten it, the commercial spirit is probably the strong- 
est. It means the pursuit of only such knowledge as "pays," 
the absorption in material ends, the rating of a living as 
higher than a life. This spirit, not satisfied with engrossing 
the business life of the country and at times menacing its po- 
litical integrity, seeks to affect every part of our education. 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 9 

Its attack is made on the foundations. Wherever it enters side 
by side with purely Hberal studies in the college course, it starts 
to drive them out or else forces them to be taught in a utili- 
tarian way, practically giving them the alternative of de- 
terioration to escape extinction. The truth that all high-minded 
knowledge is in the best sense useful, is torn and twisted into 
the half-truth of "service," the doctrine that only the knowl- 
edge of obvious use is worth having. Under this notion his- 
torical, social and political studies come to be pursued as a 
kind of "contemporary topics" of "live interest," the study of 
literature, even of our own, is narrowed to the most recent 
periods — thus shutting off depth of background, philosophy 
descends into the nursery of "child psychology," and the great 
fundamental sciences are neglected except in their most prac- 
tical applications. Other knowledge is of "no use." Where- 
ever this spirit enters professional schools it tends to modify 
injuriously the sciences which underlie the professions, so that, 
for example, pure mathematics is thought in some quarters to 
be unsuitable for the engineer and pure biology to be unsuit- 
able as a foundation for medicine. "Modified" mathematics 
or "modified" biology is the resulting hybrid. And hybrids 
are sterile. No great wave of utilitarian influence has ever 
swept unchecked into universities without disaster to liberal 
studies. There is plenty of money to be had for commercial,, 
industrial and technical education, and it is money very well 
spent, so long as these valuable forms of training are well 
organized for their own ends and are not put into a relation 
destructive to liberal education. There is little danger that 
utilitarian studies will lack friends and money. The danger 
is to the other studies. 

Another threatening force is unenlightened specialization. 
It breaks the structure of higher knowledge into fragments. 
That the scholar should be in some important sense a specialist 
is true. That he should be only a specialist is a calamity to 
himself and others. True specialization has its indispensable 



lO THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

value in the exact determination of particulars and in ac- 
curately relating particulars to the general. But the man who 
is only a specialist is an intellectual fraction. He is no longer 
whole-minded, and whole-minded men are what our scholar- 
ship most needs. A preliminary sound training in liberal 
studies is the best guarantee we have that the intending 
scholar of good native capacities is likely to be whole-minded, 
that he will be a citizen not only of the place where his 
special work lies, but of the commonwealth of knowledge. 
What has been happening these twenty years or more? Er- 
ratic men of mediocre or inferior general powers have been 
flocking into their specialties. What liberal training they may 
have had is weakened by disuse. They have intensive knowl- 
edge of one thing, which is very well indeed, with extensive 
ignorance of most other things, which is not well at all. Their 
narrow intensity of vision along some little lane of knowledge 
seems to blind them to all the scenery outside. They are 
thus isolated from the general world of knowledge, and often 
from their fellows in the same department. It is not uncom- 
mon to find philologists who know little and care less about 
the parts of philology outside the enclosure of their specialty — 
to say nothing of their almost total neglect of knowledge out- 
side of philology. The same is true of specialists in mathe- 
matics, biology, history, psychology and almost every branch 
of the higher learning. Such isolation cuts men off from 
community of sympathy. It reduces and even annuls their 
power to act together for the common good. It breaks up the 
army of scholarship into a mob of blindly colliding subdivis- 
ions. It makes it difficult to rally and marshal the army for 
the next advance. 

From this evil flows another, namely, the loss of simplicity 
and universality in the scholar's powers of expression. Our 
literature of learning is to-day overloaded with tractates and 
books of all sorts written in a tone of formidable and solemn 
pedantry. The writer is caged and mastered by his restricted 







INTERIOR OF PROCTER HALL 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRLNCETON 13 

theme. His language, or rather his dialect, becomes technical, 
arid and lifeless. His book has and can have few readers, 
even among scholars whose work is in or near his own depart- 
ment. This makes it hard to maintain a reciprocal reading 
interest which shall connect the parts of a department and, 
what is more important, connect the various departments with 
one another. 

Still another untoward result follows. The fractionally- 
minded scholar is not naturally capable, or at least is not 
easily capable of whole-minded judgments, which are the only 
ones fundamentally sound. If, as Huxley said, scientific in- 
sight is nothing more than ''highly trained common sense" 
applied to scientific questions, then highly trained common 
sense — just another name for sound judgment, is the one thing 
needful to all sensible scholarship. Good sense naturally goes 
with large vision. The man who has taken a sweeping view 
around the horizon is the one best able to discern the place and 
size of one or another segment of the scene, and the scholar 
already trained in studies of universal value is the one who 
can be depended on most surely to possess the wide-ranging 
and well-balanced view. 

There are three radical and unescapable problems which 
face every human being and are of necessary concern to every 
man who would be a complete scholar. One is the outer and 
momentous problem of nature — the world of things outside. 
To this problem the answer is vouchsafed him, so far as 
vouchsafed at all, in the teachings of Science. The second is 
the nearer problem of Mankind — the world of persons outside 
him, among whom he must move and live, and for whom his 
life ought to be spent. The answers to this problem are found 
in what, in the largest sense, we may call History. Then there 
is the third and most intimate problem, namely, his own self — 
the world within. The answers to this are written large in 
what we may call Literature. And the three problems are one. 
Ultimatelv the scholar studies nature with reference to him- 



14 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

self, and the inner miracle of his own consciousness is the 
answering marvel to the outer miracle of nature, and the 
widening horizon of Science is forever bounded by the limit 
of what human beings can know. He also studies his fellow- 
men with inevitable reference to himself. Thus his own 
human nature is and remains the centre of all problems af- 
fecting his education. The ipse mihi magna quaestio' — "a. 
mighty question was I to myself" — of the ancient thinker 
when translated into modern terms means just what Pope 
meant by "The proper study of mankind is Man." 

What next? As the three threads of his knowledge of the 
world, his fellowmen and himself come together in himself, 
they lead back into one strand that holds them all, to his first 
principles of thought and action, or what we call Philosophy. 
This is the order and summation of liberal knowledge. Any 
questions behind this belong to the ultimate problem of Re- 
ligion. But the man who has known and felt the central 
truths of Science, History, Literature and Philosophy, even 
to a slight and imperfect degree, is a whole-minded, well- 
educated man. Out of such men true scholars can be made, 
for these subjects contain preeminently what Locke called the 
''teeming truths, rich in store, with which they furnish the 
mind, and like the lights of heaven are not only beautiful and 
entertaining in themselves, but give light and evidence to 
other things that without them could not be seen or known." 
Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say that there are some ideas 
which "stretch" the mind that once entertains them, and the 
idea so eloquently phrased by Locke will permanently stretch 
the mind of every young scholar who receives it. Why should 
he not have at least a gazing acquaintance with the greatest 
constellations in the vast firmament of knowledge ? And why 
should not the graduate student, no matter how closely he 
specializes, be given every chance for fellowship with students 
in all the fields of liberal study? The student we are describ- 
ing is to be more than a specialist and even more than a gen- 




DETAIL— PROCTER HALL 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 17 

eral scholar; he is to be a human being, capable to the full of 
the highest experiences a man may know, capable of meeting 
with "many men of many minds" and of getting on with them 
all. Against the dispersion and diffraction of knowledge we 
set the unity of knowledge. Against the scattering and isola- 
tion of scholarship we set the daily companionship of scholars. 
Against the broken parts we set the whole. Against indiffer- 
ence, estrangement, intolerance, narrowness and pedantry, 
which is perhaps even more intolerable than superficiality, let 
us set the unity of general and special excellence as the stand- 
ard for the scholar individually, and brotherly association with 
others as the standard for him socially. 

On the individual side, then, we need scholars who know 
well some part and can also see the whole. No doubt this 
kind of scholarship may be attained in a way by individual 
study alone. But is not thus attained in the best way, nor is it 
likely to be retained in vigor. Most young scholars need an 
added stimulus. The "shy recluse" of Arnold's poem or the 
possessor of what Milton styled "a fugitive and cloistered 
virtue" may succeed in being whole-minded in purpose. But 
he does not know how to connect himself with men. He is 
socially a fraction, perhaps even a zero. Let us emphasize the 
truth that because a scholar is a human being he is also a 
social being. No doubt he must generally do his best thinking 
by himself. Yet he cannot live to himself alone or by him- 
self alone and fulfil his duty either to himself or to his fellow- 
men. Isolation is not freedom. To do his part as a scholar 
he must take part as a scholar in the give-and-take of a social 
life. For him this life has two environments, the inner and 
nearer world of scholars and the larger enveloping world of 
men outside. The two are needed to bring out for his own 
good the free play of his powers and to make it sure that the 
benefits he can give and take will be actually given and taken. 

His movement in the nearer world of scholars does not 
mean merely that a student of American history, for example, 



l8 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

should be interested in American history, as a whole or in 
modern history as a whole, or even in the whole of history, but 
that no important range of higher thought, even though it be 
strange to him, should be distasteful. And it means emphatic- 
ally that our student of history, no matter in how small a 
part of it, should be in friendly companionship, especially dur- 
ing the plastic time of his training with students in the other 
fields, with men of science, philosophy and letters. Here the 
magic influence of man on man turns thinking into living, and 
into living in a large and magnanimous way. It does much 
for the specialist by broadening his sympathies. It may do 
more by refreshing his energies through the recreation he can 
get out of the inspection of regions far different from 
the place where his thoughts must dwell for most of his 
time. It is this which enables him to bring new lights to bear 
on his specialty, high-lights and half-lights, in gleams and 
flashes from near and far, and to irradiate himself as well 
as his studies. Here variety becomes the cure for monotony. 
It is in fact the adventurous spirit, this free roving and rang- 
ing, the restless sweep of observation, the traveller's and ex- 
plorer's instinct, which is also a mark of the highest minds, 
both in Science and Literature. 

Personal intercourse with scholars, whose work lies in fields 
otherwise foreign, is accordingly the best prevention against 
errors of judgment which are sure to be made by the 
man who is solely a specialist. So long as the whole is 
greater than any part, this will remain true. Still, it is not 
enough, even if it were practicable, that the students of each 
single part of knowledge should know the students of each 
other separate part without knowing something more. It 
would amount merely to massing the particulars, to casting all 
the broken pieces into a confused pile. Of course, it would 
be "better than nothing," because it is better than nothing to 
realize how great is the number of the parts of knowledge. 
We are speaking here of scholars who have or at least desire to 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 21 

have the general unified view — the men who reahze that the 
final value of specialization is in relating the particular to the 
general. The parts of a tower or temple may be thrown down 
into a heap by an earthquake. All the parts are there, but the 
tower and temple are gone, and make a heap of ruins. So it 
is with the ruins of knowledge. It is the parts of the tower 
or temple assembled in definite unity that makes the differ- 
ence between the structure and its literal destruction. It is in 
getting this view of knowledge as an ordered whole, first from 
one angle and then from another and another, part to part, 
function to function, and all assembled in clear unity, that the 
scholar is forever released from specialistic constraint and 
brought out into the daylight of enlarged vision and whole- 
minded judgment. This is the release from confinement his 
widening acquaintance in the diversified world of scholars 
can and will bring to every man who has real capacity for 
freedom. The time of times for this comradeship is in his 
student days. If he misses it then, he may miss it forever. 

It is somewhat discouraging to think how much certain de- 
vices of university organization are unfavorable to the inti- 
mate intermingling of graduate students with professors and 
with each other. The departmental organization of faculties, 
a source of strength in many ways, is a source of weakness 
here, for the reason that both professor and student so often 
think of themselves as merely "departmental men." The ar- 
rangements for regulating the student's work, the slavery to 
routine, the absurd pressure put on men to secure the doctor's 
degree — as though it were the chief end of their training, the 
excessive mechanism for "safeguarding the degree," the ac- 
cumulation of "credits," the general worship of machinery and 
the commercializing of the degree itself, until it has almost 
come to be an employment badge like a "union card" — these 
are some of the things that are cramping and mechanizing 
energies that ought to be unconstrained, and are cutting off 
young scholars from free converse in things intellectual. 



22 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

Now among the things in this life that ought to be freest 
are the natural movements of the human mind in study and 
the interchange of sympathy among scholars. When and 
where is there to be a place for this if not at the graduate 
stage and in the studies so well named "liberal" ? And 
^'liberal" they truly are, for they are the studies which su- 
premely enfranchise, universalize and elevate human thinking 
the world over. It is in the higher ranges of these that labor 
becomes joy to young men, and it is here the glorious saying 
of Aristotle finds fulfilment: "Pleasure perfects labor, as 
beauty crowns youth." Let all rules and mechanism that 
hamper this be swept away! Machine-made scholarship is 
generally mediocre. It is not what we need. Of one thing 
we may be sure, that it is only by unrestricted fellowship the 
highest personalities will be attracted and happily developed — 
the men who may be depended on later to spread the friend- 
ship of knowledge wherever their influence extends. 

There is a larger society in which our scholar ought to live 
and move, the general society of men, the largest world in 
which he can give and receive influence. The race of scholars, 
at its best, is still a tribe with tribal limitations. It has its 
"idols." To generalize the exclusively scholarly point of view, 
to make it less clannish, less complacent, less "cocky," less 
priggish, less unsocial, less pedantically solemn, the scholar 
needs to know the world of men his knowledge is to serve. 
More scholars fail in life because they do not understand their 
fellowmen than because they do not understand their subjects 
of study. The theme is too vast to dwell on here. Yet it is 
at least in place to say in passing that any theory of a grad- 
uate school which practically restricts its student membership 
to intending professors and teachers is a theory which is sure 
to lessen its usefulness. For there are other men who ought 
to have a chance at higher liberal studies, men who are to 
serve their fellows with trained intelligence outside of the 
professor's chair. The presence of this second body of stu- 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 23 

dents, living and intermingling with the others, is good for 
both classes. It mediates to the intending teacher some knowl- 
edge of the world of men outside; it mediates to the others 
some knowledge of the standards of scholarship. The two 
together are needed to constitute the fuller fellowship. This 
is the fruitful and profitable community of students in higher 
studies. It is the young scholar so circumstanced who is at 
last being put on his way to be more than a learner or a 
teacher or a discoverer. It is he who is being actually and 
wisely equipped to be a guide of men. 

In our American university system the presidents and trus- 
tees and faculties, separately and collectively, are of necessary 
importance, but in the very last analysis the fate of a univers- 
ity is not dependent on them. It depends finally and forever 
on the character and attitude of the students. This is the 
self-renewing spring, the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, from 
which all streams of university life are fed and without which 
the fields of knowledge become arid and unfertile. Without 
students our universities would soon become peaceful soli- 
tudes, slumbering in an endless "long vacation." Wild as the 
statement sounds, it is nevertheless true that in the long run 
students could get along without professors easier than pro- 
fessors could get along without students. This is so obviously 
true of undergraduate life that it is a wonder it has been for- 
gotten in regard to graduate students. The forgetfulness 
seems due to the just emphasis which is to be placed on the 
prime necessity of having professors, and professors of the 
first power. Yet so long as there are young scholars to be 
formed and trained, so long must the presence of a body of 
competent students be a prime essential, indeed in a sense 
the first prime essential, even if there were no other reason 
for it than to perpetuate the supply of great professors. And 
it is largely for the sake of the students the professors are 
necessary at all. The two "go together" — in both senses of 
the phrase. 



24 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

The character of the graduate student must then be a pro- 
foundly regulative factor in the life of the graduate school. 
All those and only those who show capacity and desire for 
high intellectual effort should be encouraged to enter. It is 
no place for either shallow dabbling, narrow intensity, dull 
mediocrity or unsocial isolation. Young men, young in spirit, 
rich in intellectual and moral worth, responsive to scholarly 
impulses, eager to seek and find, able to perceive, take and use 
the more valuable as distinguished from the less valuable ma- 
terial of knowledge, willing to do all and dare all to make 
themselves master-students, open-eyed to ideas in their rele- 
vancy, worth and beauty, pulsing with energy, inventiveness 
and fantasy, men companionable, magnanimous and unselfish, 
such are the students to be longed for and prized supremely. 
These are the sons of knowledge who are best fitted to live 
not for themselves alone nor by themselves alone, but first in 
the household of knowledge and then in the larger society of 
the world. 

On the basis of such convictions the Graduate College of 
Princeton was planned. In spirit and substance it is to be a 
new institution planted in the midst of the present Graduate 
School, to take root there and gradually transform it into 
something higher. It is an answer to our needs and a prophecy 
of our hopes. It is American in being an outgrowth of our 
life and catholic in its welcome to all influences consistent with 
its nature. It is democratic in offering equal opportunity to 
all who are fit to take advantage of it, but not in guaranteeing 
that all are of equal or sufficient fitness. No such institution 
as this is planned to become yet exists in our land, and very 
few like it are to be found in foreign lands. In some ways 
its model is what might be styled the Honours Colleges in 
English universities. Have we forgotten that in one little 
entry hard by the great tower of Trinity in Cambridge there 
were housed as students Sir Isaac Newton, Macaulay, Thack- 
eray and Tennyson ? Have we forgotten Christ's College, the 




_ .Jr2-?:TZ!i:;;:_!!!^»MJj|iijijiij|iiiji,^ |;i5 . 






/ 



'^<^^^ .-- C- ««^/*^ 



DOORWAY IN THOMSON COLLEGE 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 27 

Student home of Milton and Darwin? Have we forgotten the 
work of Jowett at BalHol, or the bright earher time in Oriel 
immortalized in the lines of Matthew Arnold : 

For rigorous masters seized my youth, 
And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire, 

Shew'd me the high, white star of truth, 
There bade me gaze, and there aspire. 

Let us cross the Channel and stroll on the south side of the 
Seine, where once stood residential colleges of the old Uni- 
versity of Paris. Only the Sorbonne visibly perpetuates to-day 
even the name of any of them. But think of the ficole 
Normale Superieure, not far away, the great residential grad- 
uate college of France, more brilliant in its record than any 
other. With only about one hundred students, graduating 
some thirty a year, it has done more than any other school to 
give tone to the best French thought. Here Laplace and La- 
grange laid the foundations of modern astronomy. Here a 
great chapter in the history of mathematics was written. Here 
Pasteur taught — enough glory in itself for any place. And as 
we review the roll in physics and chemistry and history and 
philosophy and literature, and in the public service of France, 
it is with a feeling akin to despair of ever being able to match 
such a record in any American school. 

And what of the great universities of Germany? While it 
is true there is as yet no residential college for university 
students there, it is with the liveliest satisfaction we read that 
at the centenary celebration last October the thoroughly mod- 
ern University of Berlin, premier school of the German-speak- 
ing world, received and accepted gifts for the establishment 
of a residential college. 

Thus far American universities have made little provision 
for the physical and social welfare of graduate students. Here 
and there a dormitory has been set apart for the purpose. As 
a rule, however, they have been left to shift for themselves. 
Much needs to be done. If the best results are to be had, their 



28 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

standard of social living should not be that of a boarding 
house, a hotel, a club or a dormitory. It should be the quiet 
dignity of a home of learning. If the higher teachers of the 
nation should be trained in a place and society worthy of their 
calling, why should they not dwell in a beautiful, even in a 
stately home? The loveliness of King's College Chapel, which 
appealed so deeply to Milton and Wordsworth, is part of the 
best endowment of Cambridge. Scenic beauty in a university 
is more to its students than a passing enjoyment. It becomes 
an unfading picture to be kept among the treasures of life- 
long affection. Goldwin Smith was no sentimentalist, and yet 
at four-score he could write these words of memory about 
Magdalen College : "My heart has often turned to its beauty, 
and often the sound of its sweet bells has come to me across 
the ocean." It was really to him, as he said, "a little Eden in 
a world where there are none too many of them." Plain living 
and high thinking are not harmed by good architecture nor 
helped by unlovely surroundings. 

The object of founding the Graduate College of Princeton, 
however, is not to erect fine buildings or to create scenery. It 
is to create in America a valuable institution which does not 
yet exist, a residential college devoted solely to the higher 
liberal studies — a home of science and philosophy, of literature 
and history. The convictions on which it is based have al- 
ready been outlined. A short sketch of the plan of operation 
may help to make its intent clearer. 

Three elements compose the Graduate College. First and 
foremost is a body of thoroughly first-rate professors, to be 
added to others now in the faculty — interesting men, scholars 
of high power, eminent in their subjects and able to waken 
young men. Do we need to say this is the capital A in the 
alphabet? If so, let it be said again and underscored — ^be- 
cause it would be absurd to say anything else. The second ele- 
ment is a company of students of high ability — not a big 
crowd, but a moderate number^ — living as a community in the 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRLNCETON 



29 



buildings of the Graduate College. The number may be a 
hundred or so, perhaps more — but I hope not a great many- 
more. Quality first, quantity afterwards. Experience will 
settle the working limit. The important thing is that they 
shall make a student community of high type, sufficient in 
number to develop a society where every man may know his 
fellows, find the variety he needs, and not be lost in a crowd. 

The sole test of admission is mental and moral worth. To 
make social eligibility a test would be unjust and silly. What 
is wanted is strong, interesting men with scholarly instincts. 
"The workman is greater than his work" — so runs the old 
proverb. We want the best men first ; the best work will fol- 
low. This is the one straight road to achieving excellence in 
anything. We are hunting for men first, specialists second. 
How are we to get them ? — for it seems as hard to get the fit 
students as the fit professors. But, given the right professors-, 
it can be done, and done surely in one way. We have already 
had individual cases of students of high promise who were 
attracted, one by one, by the preliminary experiment of a 
graduate house, conducted for the last seven years with scant 
means on a small scale. The attractiveness of the type of 
scholarly life proposed is the sure means of bringing them — 
one by one, one bringing others, as time goes on. Like will 
follow like. Men love to study in surroundings where knowl- 
edge is visibly and socially honored. 

There will be room for "many men of many minds." The 
general range of the higher liberal knowledge is to be at- 
tempted, so far as means permit. The scholars who are to be 
professors or teachers for life will probably compose the 
major part of the family. But there will be others. There 
will be room for the intending lawyer or doctor or minister or 
engineer or architect who can give a year or so to the liberal 
studies underlying his future calling. Men may be trained 
here for the diplomatic and civil service. Still others, we hope, 
may be trained as writers. Future authors, investigators and 



30 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 

discoverers, the men who want to study economic, social or 
governmental problems, the entire range of seekers in the pure 
sciences, the student of historic art, the philosophic thinker, 
the lover of literature, the explorer of history — such as these 
may find a welcome here. It is much to expect, but not too 
much to desire. 

The third element is the buildings, the material home where- 
in this community shall find the realization of its desires. The 
conditions of student life in Princeton are distinctive. They 
are not urban or suburban or rustic, but rural. Here is the 
only large old college in a very small town. Its dominant 
college tradition is well-rooted and comparatively pure. The 
Graduate College is the flowering of this root. Whatever 
may be true of other subjects, liberal studies at least take 
on new charm amid old associations, and find a natural home 
in the peace and sylvan beauty of rural life. In order to 
make the buildings attractive and beautiful the so-called 
collegiate Gothic was chosen — not "modified" Gothic, nor 
hotel Gothic, but the exquisite perpendicular type, so 
lovely in the few remaining examples in English colleges. 
Why do students naturally love such buildings? I think it is 
because, with the scenic setting, they look inviting, domestic, 
poetic, and seem in some way ancestral to universities. Quad- 
rangles shadowing sunny lawns, towers and gateways opening 
into quiet retreats, ivy-grown walls looking on sheltered gar- 
dens, vistas through avenues of arching elms, walks that wind 
amid the groves of Academe — these are the places where the 
affections linger and where memories cling like the ivies them- 
selves, and these are the answers in architecture and scenic 
setting to the immemorial longings of academic generations 
back to the time when universities first began to build their 
homes. If you want to know what a student is, do not ask 
first what he knows or even what he believes, but find out what 
he loves. Here is the real man. Get hold of that and you 
get hold of him. Do the finer minds love the rigors of study 



^. — • 



\\ i ^4 

^•V>; '11; 

<i"U<>'V hill 
,'■ "'li' ; I '"is 

• J' Pi 



1' iT07 



>'1 







FIREPLACE— PROCTER HALL 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 



33 



and "the joy of elevated thoughts" in an American boarding 
house so well as in surroundings which appeal to their imagi- 
nation and affections? The amenities of life are worth some- 
thing — even to the young scholar. The joy of surroundings 
that keep him buoyant means doubling and trebling his power. 

This community of graduate students, with here and there 
a resident professor living among them, and their other pro- 
fessors visiting freely and intimately, is to be a busy hive of 
industry. Intimate contact of the student with his professors 
and fellow-students, one by one or in small groups, is the 
force that will "centre" his work and quicken his life. He 
will be environed by a cluster of men bent on like pursuits and 
all co-operating to a single end under the guidance of pro- 
fessors who are themselves closely united for the same end. 
The influences are always operative. Exposure to them is 
inevitable and constant. Here is the contagion of knowledge. 
The highest exertions of young minds thus come about with 
a swing and rush of power which can be produced with cer- 
tainty in no other way. And yet I hope it will also be a place 
where men will find time to think — tranquilly, steadily, pro- 
foundly, nobly — in "thoughts that breathe and words that 
burn,"' — time to think without haste on themes too important 
to be settled in a hurry. 

There is a range of intellectual life outside the courses of 
formal study. It is the range of free casual intercourse in 
things of the mind. The gathering around the fireside in the 
Common Room after dinner is one example of it. The table- 
talk and after-dinner talk of cultivated men is no small part 
of a liberal education. In the Graduate College, at least, the 
art of conversation need never die. Another means of per- 
fecting our students will be travel. Whenever desirable, any 
Fellow may be sent to some university abroad for particular 
study. The College will again and again be visited by one 
and another as he returns. Expeditions may be organized 
here. As they return with th^ir treasures of art, science or 



34 THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OE PRINCETON 

history, the Graduate College will be a welcome place for 
working out the results and preparing them for publication. 
That visitors of distinction will come to the College is certain. 
The students will thus be in the way of meeting famous men 
of other universities and lands — some of them, we hope, as 
visiting professors in residence. And where the cosmopolitan 
touch is once felt, provincialism vanishes. 

Seventeen years ago, when Princeton took her university 
name, the proposed Graduate College was first officially sanc- 
tioned. The bread has been cast upon the waters. After many 
days and many vicissitudes the College which started out as a 
paper project is returning as a fact, thanks to the devotion of 
its friends. Americans are often accused of being overpracti- 
cal. So they are. They also react the other way. Somewhere 
within them is a strain of imagination which only needs oc- 
casion to show itself as unselfish enthusiasm. It is so with 
those who have sustained this undertaking — and they are 
many and noble. Only a few can be mentioned here. The 
project appealed earliest to the practical benevolence of Mrs. 
Swann, a long-time resident of Princeton, who left to the 
Graduate College the greater part of her estate. I name four 
others. It appealed strongly to Mr. Procter, a devoted son 
of Princeton and a highly capable man of affairs as well. It 
appealed to the late Mr. Wyman, an alumnus who had never 
returned to his old college, and yet toward the end of a very 
long life, which had been keenly engrossed in acquiring wealth, 
found in the Graduate College the one object that attracted 
him irresistibly. So he left it virtually all his means. It ap- 
pealed to Mr. Pyne, the present chairman, and has seemed to 
him the worthiest consummation of the system of liberal 
studies in the loved university to which he has given the best 
of his life. It appealed to his predecessor, the first chairman, 
ex-President Cleveland, a man not susceptible to superficial 
enthusiasms, who never wavered, fair weather or foul, in his 
fidelity to the cause. "Speaking for myself," he wrote a year 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF PRINCETON 35 

before his death, "I want to say to you that I have never been 
enlisted in a cause which has given me more satisfaction or a 
better feehng of usefulness." Some of the helpers are gone 
before the college could come into existence. They will be 
remembered. Mrs. Swann's gift is visibly embodied in Thom- 
son College. Mr. Wyman's bequest will bear his memory 
onward for centuries, and the college stands on part of the 
old battlefield of Princeton, where his father, a stripling, 
fought under Washington. And the traveller hurrying past 
Princeton may now see on the western sky-line a memorial 
tower — solid, straight, aspiring — to remind him that this is 
the college to whose inception Mr. Cleveland gave the best 
effort of his closing years. 

Some think enthusiasm is "in bad form." It was the mark 
of the Renaissance. It is the mark of periods of revival and 
discovery. Enthusiasm for knowledge, for excellence, for the 
men who are to light the way of advance may be in "bad 
form," but it is in dead earnest. It is at the heart of true 
student-life. If, however, it should be quieted to save it from 
being noisy, let this be done not by suppression but by eleva- 
tion. And so in closing these reflections we may well pause an 
instant and listen intently to some quiet words of a thousand 
years ago, the calm words of Alcuin, teacher of Charlemagne, 
to his little band of students on the dignity and glory of 
learning : 

It is easy to point out to you the path of wisdom, if only ye love it for 
the sake of God, for knowledge, for purity of heart, for understanding 
the truth, yea, and for itself. Seek it not to gain the praise of men or 
the honor of this world, nor yet for the deceitful pleasures of riches ; for 
the more these things are loved the farther do they cause men who seek 
them to depart from the light of truth and knowledge. 

There is something old-fashioned, even a bit commonplace 
to some, in the sound of these words. Yet they are wise 
words, for they hold in essence the one final answer both to 
sordid commercialism and narrow provincialism in education. 



NOV 24 1913 



36 



THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OE PRINCETON 



They are not outlived yet, nor has any school even lived up 
to them fully. Could a school of higher studies have a higher 
impulse? May it energize and transfigure the new-born 
Graduate College! 




'•■it/i^.. ■ '■ ix^' 



INTERIOR OE QUADRANGLE 
LOOKING NORTHEAST 



